Tremaine So­ca Warn­er and Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

At the start of every year, it's tra­di­tion­al to ask peo­ple to share their New Year's res­o­lu­tions, but the T&T Guardian de­cid­ed to ask a dif­fer­ent ques­tion: If you were an 18-year-old to­day, what ad­vice would you give your­self??

Shali­ni Seereer­am, artist

I would tell my­self to be a lit­tle more brave with my de­ci­sions and choic­es in life as an artist. At 18 you're nev­er en­cour­aged to pur­sue art as a ca­reer. When I?was younger and fill­ing out a form that asked for your pro­fes­sion, it took me a while to say I'm an artist. I would tell my­self to pur­sue art to the fullest, al­ways ex­per­i­ment with what you do and don't hold back.

Roger Roberts, mu­si­cian

It would be to ac­cept every chal­lenge whole­heart­ed­ly and in­vest ful­ly in every sin­gle thing that you do; with­out fear and with­out con­sid­er­a­tion for what oth­er peo­ple will say. This is just a gen­er­al thing with any­thing you want to pur­sue. I find too of­ten peo­ple hold back for fear of what oth­ers will say. I would tell my­self to ac­cept the good and the so-called "bad" be­cause some­times things that we see as bad are re­al­ly lessons that we need to learn.

Ricky Gar­cia, lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor

I made a lot of mis­takes in my life and I've learnt the hard way with some things. I would prob­a­bly say to trust in God for every­thing. When you are com­ing up and you are eigh­teen you think you can take on the world but it doesn't work like that. You re­al­ly just have to trust God and fol­low his lead. That would be my ad­vice now at 50.

Ja­son Ryan Wallen, mar­tial arts in­struc­tor

I would tell my­self to lis­ten to the ad­vice giv­en to me by my fa­ther. I al­ways thought I knew more than him at 18. I even­tu­al­ly learned that was far from the truth.

Per­cy Park­er-Williams, busi­ness­man

Have a dream. That's what I would have told my­self. I made it even­tu­al­ly but at that age if I had a dream, I could have ac­com­plished things soon­er. For a dream to come through you first have to have a dream. When I fi­nal­ly fig­ured out ex­act­ly what I want­ed to do, I re­alised my dream was a tool, it gave me the abil­i­ty to do things I did not know I was ca­pa­ble of do­ing.

When your dream stops pro­gress­ing and you get com­fort­able then you stop dream­ing and grow­ing. It is not the size of your in­come or coun­try but the size of your think­ing.

Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips,Metro ed­i­tor

Hold on to the brav­ery and fear­less­ness that comes with youth. Al­ways be brave and fear­less, even if oth­ers think you are fool­ish­ly so. As you get old­er, some­where along the line, para­noia and fear steps in. It forces you to sec­ond guess your­self and de­lay your dreams. Hold on to your de­ter­mi­na­tion, keep step­ping bold­ly and nev­er al­low naysay­ers to turn you off course.

ASK YOUR­SELF

For young peo­ple who strug­gle at goal-set­ting or lack mo­ti­va­tion, a great place to start is by an­swer­ing these ques­tions:

What are some things that I re­al­ly like to do?

How good am I al­ready at these things?

Are there one of these things that I'd like to learn more about or learn to do bet­ter?

Are there com­plete­ly new things that I want to learn to do?

What are my dreams for af­ter school, as far as a ca­reer or ed­u­ca­tion?

A good key to keep in mind for set­ting goals is to fol­low the S.M.A.R.T. steps:

S for Spe­cif­ic; M for Mea­sur­able; A for At­tain­able; R for Re­al­is­tic and T for Time­ly.

The next step af­ter de­cid­ing the goals is to write them on pa­per and put it in a promi­nent place to be seen every day.